Reviews and Comments

4.5 rounded up. There are some plot holes and some cliches, but the story is completely sold by the excellent narrator. Before even finishing this book I got the second and third in the series. Been a while since I read a rollicking fantasy like this. Definitely reminiscent of Locke Lamora.

Ch2: How focusing on poverty (instead of inequality) allows for optimistic narrative about progress these past 2 centuries. Actually most happened in China, which obviously not capitalist. She presents much data on distribution of gains to show rising tides floats yachts more than boats. Piketty. Neoliberalism. How we forget to talk about class. Focusing on poverty only leaves the rich to do what they want.

Ch1: Poverty much more visible than extreme wealth. Media doesn’t report enough on the rich, many don’t notice inequality. 4 kinds of wealthy. Diff between rich and super-rich. 3 thresholds: the Rich Limit: how much it takes for people to think of you as rich; the Ethical Limit: the max amount you can hold without feeling icky (about 1M per person); the political limit: the cap the gov should incur (10M per person).

Intro: Exploring the ethics of extreme wealth. She puts her cards on the table right away, arguing for an “ethical limit” of 1m per person, to be dug into later. She bats away common criticisms: limitarianism is not about USSR communism. Nor the abolition of markets or private property. She takes apart the “envy objection” and points out the illogic of envy politics.

Cal Newport’s latest advice book tackles the question of productivity in knowledge work. Factory work can much more easily be measured and systematized. Newport points out that office workers, writers, artists, and scholars are often assigned tasks and must come up with their own individual system to be productive. These systems are opaque to managers, who end up relying on “visible activity” (which many busy office workers are familiar with) as the proxy for productivity. Add in always-on email and instant messaging apps, plus a global pandemic and people trying to work from busy homes, and you end up with a lot of burnout.

However…

See rest of review micro.chadkohalyk.com/2024/04/22/just-enough-capitalism.html

Very readable yet comprehensive history of Northern Island over the past 100 years.

Epilogue: Wrapup. "Feudal designs permit expressions of affective voice but not… effective voice." "Feudal defaults teach their users the embedded ideology of homesteading" (colonialism) "Through governable stacks, communities can identify and root out feudal patterns and remake them as commons." "The stack is social, technical, and environmental infrastructure. It is affective and effective." Not techno-solutionism.

Ch5: Cultivating governable spaces. Relies heavily on feminist theory and countering paternalism of feudalism and hierarchy. Examples of coops, exit to community, citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, Decidim, German codetermination, etc etc. These are seeds that show how we could bring citizen governance to online life. "Self-governance is not a solution; it is a practice"

Ch4: Designing "governance stacks" to refuse the colonialism of implicit feudalism. "Governable stacks are confrontations." Designing user control into apps, even at a small scale. Covers many experiments. May First Movement Tech & Policykit mentioned! 4 design goals for building self-governing modular systems, plus "archaeology" which is about connecting new gov designs to those of the past.

Ch3: using case studies of Restorative Justice and Cryptoeconomics to show expanded political imaginaries. In order to have an accountable social space, we need to "shift from scalability to subsidiarity." He does offer criticisms, but both cases demonstrate new ways for local autonomy that the reigning social infrastructure won't allow.

Ch2: Examination of the California Ideology, its "politics of no politics", frontierism and homesteading logic, and "faithless religion of exit." Stands to reason the tech does not teach political skills. Contrasts with homeplaces, Politics of everyday life, consensus building and basically microsolidarity.

Ch1: A history of online spaces from the old BBSs to modern platforms, and how their design leads to "implicit feudalism" taking away voice and leaving exit as the only option for users. From BDFLs to all powerful mods: there is little to no democratic infra for communities to improve. This is the core problem this book will tackle. The chapter ends with some positive cases (Wikipedia, Debian, Python).

Fun book! I am glad there are a whole bunch in this series. Looking forward to the next one.

Saw a review: "imagine Aubrey-Maturin, but Stephen Maturin is a dragon." Instant download!